


not what a star is, but only what it is made of

by Ingi



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: Awesome Lucy Pevensie, Awesome Susan Pevensie, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Makeup, POV Lucy Pevensie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 03:43:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11820528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ingi/pseuds/Ingi
Summary: They say goodbye, right there at the door —Peter and Edmund waiting for her further ahead, sure in the knowledge she would never leave them behind—, and Lucy thinks, fierce and deliberate,I will win you back our kingdom, sister.





	not what a star is, but only what it is made of

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know where this has come from. All I know is that I'm stuck in all my WIPs and yesterday I remembered Susan, how I didn't use to like her very much but loved Lucy instead. (This says a lot about me when I was younger, btw.)
> 
> I still love Lucy the most, and I feel like I always will, but I've come to understand and love Susan, as well. This is sort of a redemption fic, I guess, but not for her (she doesn't need one!), for me.  
> I'm sorry, Su! Please accept this gift as an apology.

The first time Lucy helps Susan put on her makeup is after they leave Caspian behind.

She can't help but think —and it's unkind, really, but she can't help it— that it hurts more, to Susan, than leaving Narnia itself. But she says nothing of it, only sits before her sister in the train and watches her, the lovely face blank and distant, the hands placed primly on the knees, relaxed.

Peter has turned his face towards the window, but his shoulders are shaking, and there's too much silence in their compartment not to hear his ragged breath sometimes, when he can't quite hold the sound back. Beside her, Edmund is observing their siblings as carefully as Lucy is, but in the end he just purses his lips and shrugs at Lucy, taking a book out of his bag and opening it from the bookmark.

As it is, it's probably a good thing Peter is too busy with his own grief to notice Susan's. Or rather, her apparent lack of it.

Lucy knows better.

A single tear perturbs the perfection of her sister's mask. It messes up her makeup as well, dragging white powder and blush with it. In a gesture that says more about Susan's pain than she'd like to know, she wipes the tear away with the back of her hand, smudging her eye shadow.

Lucy slids down her seat to kneel on the floor, takes the makeup kit from Susan's bag. Her sister is still sitting stiffly, not looking at her, so Lucy makes herself at home in the seat Peter and Susan have left between them —the symbology of it, she doesn't want to think about— and starts gently blending the remaining blush on the vulnerable path the tear left behind.

It's not perfect —Susan's tried to teach her, before, but it's not a skill Lucy believes she'll ever need—, but it's something, at least.

Susan closes her eyes and lets her reapply the eye shadow, until she's once again become flawless, untouchable. Lucy leaves the makeup kit on her sister's lap and goes back to her own seat.

Almost immediately, Edmund's right hand covers her left one.

It's one of those moments in which the ground shifts under her feet, she can feel it. Some of the old will be torn down to give way to the new. She's never minded spending some time cleaning the leftover debris, afterwards, no matter how much it scraps her hands, but-

The problem is, it's not always for the better.

 

* * *

 

Months before she's sent off to Eustace's with Edmund, Susan has a date.

Well, Susan's had many dates, but this one is more important, somehow. Maybe she actually likes the boy, for once —Lucy doesn't mind her having fun; she does mind when her sister comes back at two in the morning without her left shoe and ripped thights because her date didn't bother driving her home, and as she wipes her face clean she admits, unconcerned, that she let him paw her under her skirt and felt nothing, nothing—.

When Susan asks her to help her with her makeup, Lucy agrees, Peter's dirty looks and all, because her eyes are bright and she's smiling for real and this doesn't feel like yet another form of self-destruction. Not like the other times, Lucy asking _but does this make you happy_ and Susan keeping silent.

"Don't forget the eyeliner," Susan tells her, while Lucy is busy with the baby blue eye shadow. "You could be quite good at this if you tried, you know?"

She had almost fogotten, after all that's happened, that Susan actually enjoys this.

Lucy's faith never wavers, but she wonders, just a little, if Aslan abandoned her sister because she likes wearing pretty dresses and being kissed by someone who's not her one true love. Then she reminds herself that Aslan does not abandon, he can only be abandoned.

The doubt remains.

"There," she says, a while later. "All done."

Susan only pouts, tucking a strand of hair behind Lucy's ear. Her nails, carefully filed and painted in a very discreet color, brush Lucy's skin.

"The lipstick is the most important part, Lucy," she replies. "Trust me, it can throw the whole thing off."

"I don't think James will notice," Lucy points out, slyly.

"But I will."

And that's all Lucy needs to hear, really. _Bright red lipstick is not just armour, Lu_ , Susan told her, not so long ago —even if it feels like it's been forever, in another life, maybe, and isn't that funny—, _it's also very, very pretty_. So that's the one Lucy takes, swipes it over her sister's lips with as much assurance as she can.

Susan was right, she realises, pulling away to admire the full effect.

It's beautiful.

 

* * *

 

"Come on, Lucy, let me help you!" Susan pleads, an hour before they leave for the train.

"No, you know I'm not much for makeup," Lucy replies, distractedly. "You should start with yours, though. Peter will have a fit if we don't get there at least a quarter of an hour before the train arrives."

It's been years, but the way the breeze smells today reminds her of home. This, remembering Narnia, is a common ocurrence, and yet- something's different. The ground is shifting again.

Lucy has always been so good at hope. Perhaps not so much at what comes later.

"I'm not going," Susan says, suddenly cold. "Annabel invited me out to dance. And I've told you a thousand times to leave me out of your fantasies."

She hasn't acknowledged the existence of Narnia even once since she last left it. Lucy tried to make her, at first, they all did, but then she started thinking that maybe Narnia really had rejected her sister after all, and not the other way around. Susan doesn't take rejection well. Lucy can't blame her, especially in this.

"Wouldn't you want it to be real, though?" she asks, soft. "To go there? Wouldn't it make a good home?"

Susan scowls, puts her makeup kit in Lucy's hands rather roughly.

"I know how the stories go, Lucy," she replies, voice like a knife. "There's no place for girls like me in any fairytales. If I wanted to resign myself to being the bad witch, maybe. Or the repentant villain, forever grovelling, cutting off parts of herself for penance, begging forgiveness that she doesn't need and that won't come, because that wouldn't make for an appropiate moral." Her eyes flutter closed when Lucy takes a brush to her cheek with butterfly-light touches. "I won't stand for that," she whispers. "I can't."

They don't speak any more until Susan's makeup is finished.

"I think you'll outshine Annabel, gorgeous as she is," Lucy only says, then.

Susan beams, pleased, but Lucy knows she hasn't forgotten. She doesn't think either of them ever will.

They say goodbye, right there at the door —Peter and Edmund waiting for her further ahead, sure in the knowledge she would never leave them behind—, and Lucy thinks, fierce and deliberate, _I will win you back our kingdom, sister_.

A part of her hopes Aslan is listening, because she means it. Oh, how she means it.

Later, there's the train and a noise like a thousand of worlds breaking all at once. Lucy doesn't really remembers this part. She awakens soon enough, her hands gripping her brothers', and she's home.

Susan isn't with them.

But mourning is for the dead, and the lost, and the broken. Susan is out there somewhere, twirling in a dance floor with Annabel, a shinning star if there ever was one. Lucy will miss her with all her heart until they meet again —and they will, she swears on everything she holds dear—, but she's- and good lord, she would've never imagined she'd think this, but- she's glad her sister isn't here.

"My sister Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia," is what Peter says, to Tirian.

Lucy isn't fast enough to stop the resulting conversation —the bashing, more like it, and how do they dare—, but she watches them, ignited, and she listens, and she drops her brothers' hands and her own curl into fists, dull nails nearly breaking the skin of her palms. They don't notice, they so rarely do, but dear, perceptive Edmund links his arm with hers.

"Ah," Tirian says, understanding. "You no longer have two sisters, then."

"He'll have two sisters or he'll have none," Lucy snaps. She doesn't know what's in her eyes, but she can imagine, for how they shy away from her gaze. "Narnia will always have two queens, never forget."

Tirian bows his head in apology and acceptance, considerably paler than he was a second ago —much like the rest of them—. She still doesn't regret it.

They begin walking, steps light with hope, and Lucy thinks of Susan once again, of her sister's arm linked with some boy's like hers is with Edmund's, of them dancing to the music, the boy holding her sister close and tight, Susan's bright red lips curled in laughter.

She smiles.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (there was a lot of unplanned, low-key Edmund & Lucy, but I'm sure you've noticed. whoops.)
> 
> Anyways! I think this has helped with my writer's block at least some, so awesome.


End file.
